Title supplied by cataloger. Rolland Joseph 'Speedy' Curtis was born in Louisiana in 1922. After serving three years in the Marines during World War II, he and his wife, Gloria, relocated from New Orleans to Los Angeles in 1946. Curtis served four years with the Los Angeles Police Department, but resigned from the force in order to pursue both a Bachelor's and Master's degree from USC. He later became involved in city politics, as an associate of Sam Yorty, and later a field deputy to City Council members Billy Mills and Tom Bradley. He was briefly director of the Model Cities program in 1973. Rolland J. Curtis died in his home in 1979, the victim of a homicide. An affordable housing complex on Exposition Blvd. near Vermont Ave. was named in his honor in 1981, along with a nearby street and park.; Rosalind (Roz) Wiener Wyman (b. 1930-) was the youngest person (and only the second woman) ever elected to the Los Angeles City Council and one of the youngest elected officials of a major U.S. city, as well as the first Jewish Council member in 53 years. Wyman graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1948 and attended the University of Southern California where she received a B.S. in Public Administration in 1952. She became politically active in college, launched her successful campaign for the City Council seat and was elected in 1953 when she was just 22. During her first Council term in 1954 she married attorney Eugene Wyman, a graduate of Northwestern University and Harvard Law School - a fellow Democratic activist, who founded a large entertainment law firm in Los Angeles. While on the city council, Rosalind Wyman was the first female acting mayor, and she played a pivotal role in bringing the Dodgers baseball team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1957. Unfortunately, controversies over that arrangement contributed to Wyman's defeat for a fourth term in 1965. After leaving office, and in the sad aftermath of her husband's unexpected death in 1973, Wyman continued her involvement in political and public affairs, her influence extending beyond California to the national Democratic Party. During the 1974 congressional campaigns, she became the first woman to head a major party's fund-raising efforts. She served as Convention Chair and chief executive officer of the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, the first woman of either major Party to wield the gavel at a presidential nominating convention. Wyman has been a delegate to every Democratic National Convention since 1952 (except one), last attending the historic 2008 Convention which nominated Barack Obama. Wyman's national appointments include the UNESCO Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has been a leader of the Los Angeles Jewish community, has received many Jewish community awards, chaired fund-raising events, and served on the board of American Friends of the Hebrew University. Wyman has also been a board member of many arts, social services, educational and health organizations, and has received numerous awards, locally and nationally.; Arnett Hartsfield, Jr. was a Serviceman, Firefighter, Instructor and while employed as a firefighter, became an attorney to continue to work against injustice and inequality. Hartsfield was appointed to the LAFD in 1940 and served for 20 years. He worked at Station 30 in East Los Angeles. While firefighting, he used his GI Bill to go back to school and attend both UCLA and USC and earned a law degree in 1955. That same year, Los Angeles Fire Department firefighters received the notice to desegregate all of the fire houses. Hartsfield, who had been a firefighter for 15 years and had just passed the bar exam, was the first to join a white station in order to begin desegregation. He recalled, "the captain met me at the door and gave me a direct order never to enter the kitchen when the white firemen were eating, to use my own pots and pans and to shower only when no whites were using the washroom. I was already an attorney, and every day I came to work and scrubbed toilets." Arnett Hartsfield, Jr. retired in 1961 to practice law full time. Former Councilwoman Rosalind Wiener Wyman (second from right) is pictured with retired Los Angeles Fire Department firefighter Arnett Hartsfield Jr. during a campaign event for Wyman's bid to be elected to the Community College Board of Trustees. The woman and youth with them are unidentified, but are possibly Hartsfield's wife and Wyman's eldest son, Bobby. Photograph circa 1971. See images 00128015; 00128427; 00128581 through 00128585, and 00143407 through 00143420 for additional photos in this series.
Type
image
Format
1 negative : safety ; 10 x 13 cm. Photographic safety negatives
Wyman, Rosalind Wiener Wyman, Rosalind Wiener--Family Hartsfield, Arnett Hartsfield, Arnett--Family African American men Men African American women Women African American lawyers African American fire fighters Husband and wife Couples Boys Mothers and sons Working mothers Education--Political aspects Campaign management Dwellings Smiling Los Angeles (Calif.)
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